{"id":69,"date":"2006-10-24T12:38:07","date_gmt":"2006-10-24T16:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/humanism\/2006\/10\/24\/questioning-religious-faith-and-yet-"},"modified":"2006-10-24T13:52:09","modified_gmt":"2006-10-24T17:52:09","slug":"questioning-religious-faith-and-yet-finding-inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/2006\/10\/24\/questioning-religious-faith-and-yet-finding-inspiration\/","title":{"rendered":"Questioning Religious Faith and Yet Finding Inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below, in full, is the wonderful New York Times review<\/a> of Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God, which she will perform at Harvard this Thursday, in her only New England performance this year. Tickets are still available at the Harvard Box Office, 617-496-2222, or here<\/a><\/strong>. Poster available here.<\/a><\/p>\n

October 24, 2006
\nTHEATER REVIEW | ‘LETTING GO OF GOD’
\nQuestioning Religious Faith and Yet Finding Inspiration<\/p>\n

By ROB KENDT
\nCan an atheist lift the spirit? In her searing and bracingly funny solo show \u201cLetting Go of God,\u201d Julia Sweeney traces her bumpy journey away from religious faith in an accessible, no-frills format that suggests the kind of inspirational self-help lecture you might see around PBS pledge time.<\/p>\n

But where Deepak Chopra or Wayne W. Dyer, say, come bearing warm broth, distilled from revered spiritual traditions, Ms. Sweeney arrives with a bucket of cold water for all supernatural belief systems, from her family\u2019s old-school Roman Catholicism to the New Age alternatives (including Mr. Chopra) embraced by many of her peers.<\/p>\n

In her fluent, friendly and offhandedly riveting account, what started with a visit from two young Mormon missionaries soon became a fitful but unrelenting quest for an adult understanding of the deity she always sincerely sensed was at her side. Ms. Sweeney felt God\u2019s presence, sure \u2014 but what did she really believe about him?<\/p>\n

She\u2019s almost sorry she asked: upon examination, the Bible horrifies her, and so, ultimately, does the implicit determinism of every spiritual approach she tries, from Buddhism to the Deist notion of God in nature. Once she loses the Christian plot she\u2019d never before questioned, the idea that everything happens for a reason in a universe where someone, or something, is minding the store increasingly rings hollow.<\/p>\n

Ms. Sweeney, in other words, has come a long way from the snickering androgyny of the film \u201cIt\u2019s Pat!\u201d and gone deeper than her previous solo show, \u201cGod Said \u2018Ha!\u2019,\u201d about her brother\u2019s fatal lymphoma. Without breaking her affably conversational tone, in \u201cLetting Go of God\u201d she inhabits the emotional memory of each step on her path, from the cozy warmth of her erstwhile prayerful faith to the confusion and terror, and finally the hard-earned peace of mind, that attend her gradual un-conversion.<\/p>\n

At a time when religious faith is either the subject of shrill controversy, with prejudice and misunderstanding on both sides (Mel Gibson, meet Christopher Hitchens), or of a lukewarm tolerance that\u2019s fundamentally uncurious about what people actually believe, \u201cLetting Go of God\u201d is refreshingly unrancorous, lucid and, yes, inspirational. Ms. Sweeney may not believe her audience has spirits to be moved, but that\u2019s certainly how it feels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below, in full, is the wonderful New York Times review of Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God, which she will perform at Harvard this Thursday, in her only New England performance this year. Tickets are still available at the Harvard Box Office, 617-496-2222, or here. Poster available here. October 24, 2006 THEATER REVIEW | ‘LETTING […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/humanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}